Hakeem says to swap out the Packleaders for Triumph of Ferocity x2


I wouldn't listen to him, he's been in the screech again. Instead I would take out the hunter's prowess to max out pellakas and packleaders

I simply don't understand some of these arguments. I really just don't.

Yes, I'd rather play Kozilek than an Elite Vanguard. Kozilek is a much better card. So what?

Edit: here's your tempo argument, my Elite Vanguard (which is clearly not as powerful as Kozilek) had time to kill you before you drew your 10 mana.

That isn't the point, the point is WHEN we play the card.

A card that costs 3 mana that sits in your hand until you have 6+ mana isn't doing you any favors.

Certain cards are much better when played on curve than otherwise not, in fact, most cards are because what they match up against is similarly effected.

Elite Vanguard gets played because it can be played on curve early, and most decks running it are looking to ride early tempo to a win.

Elite Vanguard in fact is the exact example of what I am talking about.

Elite Vanguard is great when played on T1 because the A.) it represents 2 power attacking on T2 (aka early tempo), and B.) Because it matches up well against most of the other early drops in the format.

The longer and longer the game goes on, the less and less value Elite Vanguard has though. An Elite Vanguard played on T6 isn't often going to do a whole lot of good in a world where people start to throw around cards like Inferno Titan and the like. At that point the only value Vanguard has is often in attempting to go wide enough to get past those bigger late game plays.

Certain cards gain and lose value based on WHEN they are played. Wild Nacatyl is great as a 3/3 early on, but top decking one when your opponent has something like a Pelakka Wurm on the table doesn't do you a whole lot of good most of the time.

Many cards, and the decks in which they make up gain their value by the fact that they are played early to get a tempo advantage.

If you are building a deck around creatures like this, cards like Nacatyl and Thoctar which are really at their best when played early and on curve, I don't feel like taking time off to cast an enchantment (aka non-threat) is worth it in the early game. In the late game it feels even less worth it due to what we and other decks have access to. If we are holding onto a card like Triumph and casting it on T6+ most games, its obvious that we don't need Triumph to get us to the point of having 6+ mana (so replacing it with a 6 drop isn't going to hurt us any, since we are casting it as a 6 drop the majority of the time anyways), and once we have 6+ mana, it is generally going to be more fast and consistent to devote mana to those game winning creatures instead of a slow and potentially ineffectual enchantment.

That's a great argument. Thanks.

However, that same argument would work as a reason to play Angelic Edict over Ground Assault. Because fundamentally, the most dangerous creatures in dotp are Baneslayer, etc... and therefore you shouldn't play GA until you see one of them drop.

Nope. GA is clearly the better card. It costs 2 mana, and can be played on T2 when needed. OR it can be held until much later. All the way to the point that AE, because it exiles, becomes the strictly better card.

You know what I apologize for that.

That was too snarky, by a mile, and I don't want to be that guy.

Let me put this another way. I'm sure we all agree that drawing an additional card every turn is extremely powerful. So let me try a different tact. Let's figure out a way to exploit that EXTREMELY powerful potential somehow. It will be spike as all hell. So let's just do it. Make it a mind exercise, or whatever. I fully believe megabeast is correct, and he has found one. But there is no way that that effect, as a goal, isn't worth figuring out.

This is a terrible analogy to begin with.

First off removal spells function differently than the traditional threats/engine cards.

Holding onto a removal spell is much different than holding onto a threat.

Removal spells are reactive, threats and engine cards a proactive.

Holding onto removal often isn't going to set you back.

Which is kind of the point here.

GA is good on T2 when you need to kill something.

GA is also good on T7 when you need to kill something.

Which is exactly WHY Triumph is bad.

Triumph is bad on T3, because at that point you would much rather be playing out actual threats to put your opponent on a clock. 99% of the time you are going to be better served playing a 3cmc creature on T3 than you will be playing Triumph. If given the option between playing Thoctar and Triumph on T3 you will almost ALWAYS be better off playing the Thoctar.

Triumph is also bad when played off curve. If in the majority of scenarios you are playing Triumph on T6+ then the card isn't integral as a means of REACHING that 6+ mana, and thus the deck isn't really going to suffer any from replacing the card with something that actually costs that much, which is likely to provide a much larger amount of value.

You don't want to be playing Triumph as a 3 drop if you can help it, and the longer and longer you wait to play it, the more mana both you and your opponent have accumulated, meaning when you DO play it, it likely isn't going to hold nearly the value of these other drops.

If Triumph sits in your hand waiting to be cast until you have 6 mana on the table in the majority of games, then by the time you cast it there is a good chance that your opponent is going to be at the point where they are able to cast threats that cost 6 mana.

If you play Triumph early, you aren't playing early creatures to eek out that tempo advantage.

If you play Triumph late, you are casting it instead of something that actually costs that CMC, which is likely what your opponent is going to be doing.

The question becomes, once both you and your opponent have 7 mana on the table, would you rather be casting Triumph, or something like Pelakka Wurm. Chances are high that your opponent is going to be casting Pelakka Wurms and the like, which makes casting your own even more valuable, because it actually matches up against other 6+ drops in the format, which Triumph does not.

That is the crux of the argument I am making here.

If you are casting Triumph on curve, you are actively gimping yourself in the tempo department, which is what these types of decks thrive on.

If you are casting Triumph off of curve, you would be better off running/casting a threat for the appropriate CMC instead, because it actually matches up against what the opponent is likely to be playing.

Even if you are Casting Triumph on T6 and using the other 3 mana to cast another threat (like the previously mentioned scenario of casting Thoctar+Triumph) you will gain overall more value off of dropping a 6cmc creature instead, and your opponent is likely to be doing just that. While you are playing Triumph+Thoctar, they are playing Inferno Titan or something similarly costed, which not only has the superior body to Thoctar, but also shuts off your Triumph in the process BECAUSE it has that superior body.

If in 90% of games you are casting a card off curve, then you HAVE to be able to compare the card to other cards of the cost at which you are playing the card, because those are cards that A.) You could potentially be playing yourself instead of said off curve card, or B.) Are what your opponent is likely to be playing at that point in the curve.

If the majority of the time you aren't playing a 3cmc card until you have 6 mana on the table, then it HAS to be compared to other cards at the same point in the curve. If Triumph is clogging up your hand and doing nothing for you until you have 6 mana on the table, then the deck isn't going to suffer any more if that card were to be replaced with a 6 drop instead. A card like Inferno Titan isn't going to clog up your hand any more or less than Triumph would when drawn early (since on average we are waiting till T6+ to cast Triumph anyways to allow us to devote creatures to the board to gain that early tempo advantage).

They also must be compared because you have to assume that that is what you are likely to be facing from an opponent. The longer and longer we wait to cast a card like Triumph, the less and less value the card itself holds because we have more mana and are thus able to play more expensive cards, and the same is true of your opponent.

This is the whole reason why we compare cards of similar mana costs to each other. Inferno Titan and Grave Titan can be compared relatively easily, because they both cost 6cmc and thus both represent the potential value of what both you and your opponent can get for 6 mana.

If you are potentially sandbagging cards to play out off curve though, then you have to understand that these cards HAVE to still be compared to what is available for that particular CMC. If you only ever cast Triumph on T6+ then even though the card only costs 3cmc, it is still effectively (or rather, virtually) a 6 drop. It may only cost 3cmc, but it is still often sitting in your hand as a dead card until you hit those high mana totals and can either play it AND something else, or just don't have anything else to play but it.

At which point running a 6cmc spell in that slot isn't going to hurt you, since if you draw it early, it's going to do exactly what Triumph did, sit in your hand doing nothing until you hit 6cmc, so it isn't hurting you to run it instead any more than running Triumph does. The difference is that that 6cmc spell compares better to the other plays being made on those turns by your opponents so has more upside in the late game, without having any more of a downside when drawn early than what you were running in the first place (Triumph).

Now of course Triumph only costs 3cmc in reality, so there is always the option to play it on or closer to curve which you couldn't do if that card were to be replaced with a more expensive card. We could play Triumph on 4 for example where we couldn't play a 6 cmc card

Normally this would be an advantage for the card, but as we have already discussed, playing Triumph on curve is exactly what you DONT want to be doing, since it is directly going to be cutting into your early tempo and generally only exists to function as an engine to keep the gas flowing in the late game, an engine that requires you to have a significant board presence to function, something which you aren't progressing if you are casting 3cmc enchantments in the early turns instead of actual creatures.

I can't compete with the wall of text. I don't agree that triumph is always a bad t3 play. I don't agree that it's a 6 mana or even 5 mana equivalent card 90% of the time. I do agree that it's a pause on the turn that you play it, but I disagree that it isn't a worthy pause. I do believe that you can build a deck that will cause it to draw 90% of the time, which is what I'd want. /shrug

Finally, I maintain that it's clearly worth building around. It's a free card draw engine. That's a big deal, IMO.

Sorry, old habits die hard, I am just one of those kinds of people, I am not great at editing myself, so when I want to get a point across I often tend to put more words into trying to express my thoughts than necessary.

Anyways.

The problem with taking T3 off to play Triumph is that it sets you up for a lot of really bad situations.

While I can see some scenarios where it could work (getting 2 early Nacatyl) the majority of them are just going to lead to bad board positions.

Going Nacatyl>Triumph or even Thoctar>Triumph may seem good, but all it takes is a single removal spell for your opponent to get themselves off the clock, and leave you with no creatures on the table, and leave you with a Triumph on the table that does nothing.

You can make the point that this is drawing out removal early and that may be the case, but playing a second creature instead of the Triumph would have essentially forced them into removing one of them just as much as the Triumph will, and it does so while still allowing you to have some sort of clock on your opponent since you still have a creature on the table.

Let them waste their removal on my early turn vanillas, I'm cool with that. By your description of the situation, I just forced them to 1 for 1 me (probably with a card that had better value for them, if they could hold it), while getting to keep an enchant out that will have value later. That's a trade I'll take. What I lose in early pressure, I gain with a hard to remove permanent, a forced play style on my opponent, and value later on. That's not bad value from a 3 CMC card, at all.

The reason I am hesistant to remove hunter's prowess is if the attack goes through it lets me see more of my deck than any other card in naya. This alone lets me grab the answer to w/e the problem is. Now that you mention it I might drop the hydras for the additional draw from packleader + pellaka. However, I do still see value in the genesis into ogre battledriver or packleader combo.

i agree with everything you just said except being hesitant to remove hunter's prowess. It's way more important that your packleaders and pelakkas perform so max them out to be more consistent. I didn't see anything more obvious to cut for those inclusions other than Hunter's Prowess.

Your drawing is totally fine in that deck between pack leaders and hydras, I promise.



Eon should be eligible to be canonized for the spirited work he's done on making the case against Triumph of Ferocity

Holy crapton of ferocity discussion batman.

I have seen an awful lot of talk about this card in the abstract, but card power is always relative IMO. For reactive cards what matters is how other people build their decks, for proactive cards what matters is how you build your deck.

Triumph has not functioned well in the decks where I have seen it played, but that doesn't mean it is always a bad card in every deck.

As Aauj pointed out, I think it would be great in a build that utilized the hexproof 3/3, aura gnarlid, arrest, ethereal armor, etc. Such a build would NOT have the option of running packleader. Actually I might just work on a decklist - I feel like the existing aura decklists are more or less one trick ponies that either win big with a ton of auras stapled onto hero of iroas, or fall flat on their face.

The question is whether I would run the deck as W/G or add a third color - blue doesn't have much for auas except maybe scroll thief, black has dead weight and deviant glee (not much synergy unless it doesn't kill its target), red has maniacal rage and removal.

Is triumph a card I would pick in draft? Absolutely not, but I am going to have a go on that auras list.

I'm working on my Triumph list for mjack.. it's been pretty decent so far.

War Monk and Thoctar.. Arbor Colossus, Terra Stompers, Reprisals, Ground Assaults, Hunters Prowess, Triumph.. it's coming along nicely.

This isn't a finished deck yet - I am posting this so I can continue working on my other computer

what did I miss over the last couple of days that triumph is now a thing?

I aim to please.

Seriously though, drunk posting, the wife is out of town for the night and frankly I am taking advantage of it an am totally plastered atm.

Which makes me think of beast and his trip for whatever reason.

Catch something worthwhile! I am hungry!

I will! Grouper season opens May 1st..

Makes me want to go out. I need to stop being so lazy. This is the perfect time of year for it here in Ohio. Not god-awful hot, and the mosquitos haven't gotten insane yet like they do in the mid-late summer.

HenWen, the only obvious, common-sense swap I saw is

-3 Triumph of Ferocity
+3 anything

Ok Hakeem929..